The Get Inspired! Project &ndash; Daryl Mast

Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece. Welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Daryl Mast with me. Hi, Daryl.

Daryl Mast: Good morning, Toni.

Toni: How are you doing?

Daryl: I’m doing good. Thanks.

Toni: Good. So Daryl, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Daryl: My name is Daryl Mast, and I was born and raised in the little town of Morgantown. I’m the oldest of five kids, and grew up on a dairy farm. I have a wife. I have three young boys, and one more on the way.

Toni: Wow – congrats!

Daryl: We’ll learn the sex next week. Looking forward to that.

Toni: What’s the name of your business, Daryl?

Daryl: Our business is called Doorstep Dairy. My wife and I started Doorstep Dairy in June of 2010, so almost four years ago. We’re having a real good time. We network with a lot of local farmers right here in the Lancaster/Berks/Chester County area. We bring their products to our online store. We offer delivery to our customers. The majority of that is done through home delivery. I guess I’m the milkman.

Toni: That sounds really interesting. I would encourage people to check you out, right?

Daryl: Check us out. We’re having fun trying to create new markets for these local farmers and other food businesses that we have the privilege of working with each week.

Toni: Fantastic. Let’s go into the first question. What does inspiration mean to you?

Daryl: Inspiration – I think inspiration may be something that we experience or witness, something that we’re a part of and maybe we’re just sitting back and observing it, but it can be something that encourages us to be better in the way that we treat others, the way we maybe operate our business, maybe the way we think about ourselves. I think inspiration doesn’t have to be that big event or that Olympic moment maybe that inspires us, but it can be. There’s a lot of small things that I think we can be inspired by. I think inspiration almost needs to be a choice.

Toni: Oh, I like that.

Daryl: There’s a lot of little things. You think of music or a sunset or something like that that we can get busy and never even see it or never even look up and realize that it’s there. I think we can miss that.

Toni: So it’s a choice to pay attention.

Daryl: I think so. I enjoyed the one commercial during the Olympics. I think it was the Proctor and Gamble “Thank You, Mom” commercial where it gave snapshots of the mom working with the toddler as they grew, and we see that person skating to their best. That’s great, but there’s all those things along the way that that commercial brought out that were inspiring.

Toni: That led up to that success.

Daryl: Exactly.

Toni: When you think a series of events or the times that you have chosen to pay attention that have inspired you, how have you put that into practice here in Berks County?

Daryl: I tend to be a people pleaser. For example, we have a great group of customers that we work with, and they’re appreciative of the service we provide. They’ll leave notes. They’ll say, “Thank you.” One lady, she brews a hot pot of coffee every evening before she goes to bed and leaves it in the cooler for me with cream. Those things can inspire me. On the other hand, if there’s something that goes, as it does… if we mess up an order and somebody is displeased, that can get me down sometimes. But I think I need to step back and try to get perspective and realize it’s not what defines me.

Toni: It’s also the way that you’ve described what inspiration means to you and in that choice and paying attention, if there’s some way that maybe there was an order that was not correct, you may be inspired to do better.

Daryl: Exactly.

Toni: Those that are leaving notes of gratitude inspire you to do better. That’s pretty cool. Every action is a reaction that inspires you to do something different.

Daryl: Yes, exactly.

Toni: So who in Berks County inspires you?

Daryl: This was a tough one. I wanted to say my customers inspire me, but that sounds kind of cliché. I’m going to have to say my big brother. I’m the oldest in my family, so he would be my biggest brother younger than me. His name is Rodney. In April of 1996, a number of years ago, he was diagnosed with leukemia.

I know it’s not a unique story. Everybody’s been touched by cancer in one way or another, if not yourself probably you know somebody. This hit our family. He was 17, and I was 22 at the time. He was with us for nine months after his diagnosis, and he passed away. Jesus called him home. That was a really tough time in our family, but you asked me who inspires me, and he faced it incredibly as a 17-year-old. He turned 18; it was his senior year when he passed away.

He was a real inspiration, and I think the term, “Don’t cry over spilled milk”… I know it’s been years ago, but I probably think about him every day. Just getting back to the thing of when we make mistakes and we can get down, that whole chapter in my life is something that has really given me perspective. It helps me to step back and see the big picture and realize what’s important – my family, my wife, my kids – that’s the bottom line. Don’t cry over spilled milk.

Toni: I love that. It’s the choice also to notice that sunset and the sunrise as you spoke to earlier.

Daryl: Exactly.

Toni: What a beautiful, beautiful story. What do you want your legacy to be?

Daryl: That’s another good question to think about. In the line of work that I’m in, I have the privilege of having lots of conversations with people. People talk about their milkman or their bread guy or their chip guy. As a kid they say, “We remember the bottles clinking,” or, “We’d wake up, and we’d hear somebody in the kitchen, and it was the milkman putting the bottles in the fridge.” It’s kind of nostalgic. I don’t know if that’s the word for it. I’m meeting little kids now. The times change. It’s light when I’m out. I think that would be cool for them to be telling their grandkids about their milkman.

Honestly, 100 years from now, probably not too many people are going to remember me, and that’s fine, but I think the greatest thing that I can do is to just take the values and the morals, the faith that my parents have instilled in me, and if my children are still passing them on to their kids, that’s the legacy I want to leave.

Toni: What a lovely interview. Thank you for showing up to the Get Inspired! Project.